Tuesday, 16 August 2016

There is a very good reason that I have utter contempt for health nazis, as I have described a few times before.

To the vast majority of us MacGregor is a crank who makes shit up about his personal irrational prejudice about a pretty minor problem because he's a revolting, froth-mouthed cocksnorter of biblical proportion, but when heard by fellow gut-wrenchingly repellent snobs, it's an invitation to be the most vile they can be.

The MacGregor referred to is a certifiable lunatic who used to run Campaign for Action on Salt and now runs Action on Sugar. His campaigns rely on the bigotry of the most odious in society and are based on nothing more than snobbery, as I described when I wrote that piece about Osborne's announcement of a sugar tax.

Osborne didn't usher in any new success for 'public health' yesterday - for the simple fact that a sugar tax has never worked and, as admitted by those who favour it, never will - but he certainly delivered multiple orgasms to the most deranged and repugnant in our country; the type you would hide behind the sofa to pretend you were out if you saw them park outside your house. If pandering to the vile and intolerant was the purpose, the upper class boy Osborne did exceptionally! He enthralled his fellow pompous and snooty middle class minions and stuck it to the less well off good, so he did.

This latent food snobbery was evident in April too when the awesome Tom Harris ripped into Labour for banning McDonald's from its party conference.

Snobbery towards McDonald’s is nothing new on the British Left. You only have to mention their name on Twitter to provoke a deluge of self-righteous comments from people living in London who wouldn’t dream of letting little Marcus or Louisa sink their perfectly aligned incisors into a Big Mac or a McChicken Sandwich.

Yes, because snobbery is the only driver behind the disgust for McDonald's. Their menu is far healthier than most of the artisanal local restaurants favoured by the elite and the connected. It's just that those unwashed chavs like to eat in it, innit.

But just as sinister nosy curtain-twitchers will always try to pretend that their compulsion to insert themselves into the lives of others is somehow altruistic, the nauseating 'public health' lobby will always try to pretend that their teen ideology-driven hatred of popular businesses like McDonald's is based purely on health ... which is bollocks, quite frankly, as Harris highlighted.

Lastly, there’s the handy, media-friendly excuse for stopping McDonald’s having access to delegates when they meet in September under Labour’s banner in Liverpool: health. That a Big Tasty with bacon and an extra large side of fries followed by a Cadbury’s Caramel McFlurry is not classed as health food will be as big a shock to diners as the revelation that the Pope does not practice the Protestant faith.

But to defend the existence of McDonald’s in our local High Street is to invite accusations of being an enabler of childhood obesity. It’s not up to poor, ignorant parents to tell their kids “No” when they ask for a Happy Meal; rather, it is up to McDonald’s themselves to offer only non-fried, non-meat-based, non-tasty food, probably in a safe space…

In case you weren't convinced, this (now deleted) tweet from Action on Sugar today might make you think on it.

Incredible, huh?

MacGregor's trouser-stuffing vehicle is actually trying to suggest that Olympic athletes need advice from his kind of finger-wagger about their diets; that a marathon runner - for example - should be eating salad. The idea that a pigeon-chested streak of piss like MacGregor should be tutting at Olympians on their diet when they can out-run, out-leap, and - with any luck - out-batter his celery-legged arse is quite hilarious.

They, of course, became a laughing stock on Twitter for a while before trying to get rid of the evidence of their twisted fanaticism, but once it's out there you just know someone is going to grab it. It was a tweet driven solely by extreme fanaticism and a haunting unease at the sight of people enjoying a product which Action on Sugar, themselves, despise.

It is clear and transparent snobbery, and nothing to do with health. But then, nothing they do has anything to do with health, it's more a campaign driven by smug disgust for the choices of others, staffed by fanatics and extremists, and designed to insert themselves uninvited into the lives of others.

This is the very definition of trolling; the deliberate interference into other people's lives for the sole purpose of causing maximum disruption to our calm enjoyment of life. It really is well beyond time that politicians thought about ignoring trolls like Action on Sugar and their pretend 'public health' ilk, don't you think?